1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to thermal management of computer systems, and more specifically to the movement of air in a computer chassis.
2. Background of the Related Art
Computer systems are generally provided inside a chassis to provide physical support and air circulation for each of the individual components. A typical chassis will include a motherboard, one or more data storage device, a power supply and one or more chassis fan. The motherboard itself may include any number of standard heat-generating components, such as a processor, memory, basic input/output system (BIOS) and interconnecting circuitry. However, a motherboard may also include one or more expansion slots, such as a peripheral component interface (PCI) connector that allows the capability or capacity of the computer system to be expanded.
When a high power expansion card is installed on the motherboard, the chassis fans may not be sufficient to deal with the amount of localized heat-generation caused by operation of the expansion card. Accordingly, an expansion card, such as a high end video card, may include a heat sink and a fan (collectively referred to as an “active heatsink”) to provide the amount of dedicated cooling necessary to operate the expansion card. Some of these active heatsinks direct airflow in the same direction as the chassis fan. However, it is not uncommon that an expansion card may direct airflow opposite to the direction of the chassis fan. For example, a front-mounted video card may draw cool air through an air inlet on the front end of the chassis and exhaust hot air through an exhaust outlet that is on the front end of the chassis immediately adjacent to the air inlet.